Better be part of the plan Big Unit! Because without your inside info, it looks very much like we blinked first!
Qantas engineers back down on industrial action
May 15, 2008 - 1:25PM
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Qantas engineers have backed down from planned industrial action, preventing the cancellation of 12 domestic flights.
ACTU president Sharan Burrow today stepped in and asked the union to call off its four-hour stop-work meeting tomorrow afternoon, which would have caused Qantas to cancel a number of domestic flights.
Engineers have reportedly indicated they will accept a smaller increase to a wage demand.
Ms Burrow said the engineers would be willing to accept a rise somewhere in between the five per cent they demanded and the three per cent Qantas had continued to offer over the previous 18 months of failed wage negotiations.
The news came moments after Qantas Airways, Australia's biggest airline, announced the cancellation of 12 domestic flights tomorrow because of the planned strike.
The Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association (ALAEA) had suggested Qantas management was preparing to lock out unionised staff and call in strike-breakers.
But airline boss Geoff Dixon said the airline had no such plans.
"We have no intention of locking anybody out," Mr Dixon told ABC Radio before the industrial action was called off. "We have no intention of replacing our workforce. There'll be no balaclavas, there will be no dogs."
But Mr Dixon warned that any escalation of industrial action would be met with a response from the airline.
He would not confirm or deny that the airline had been in discussions with a Malaysian-based company called Newport Aviation, which the ALAEA says is run by individuals linked to Qantas' labour-hire business Forstaff Aviation.
Ms Burrow said she would write to Mr Dixon today, asking him to join wage negotiations at a meeting to be scheduled for next week.
"I've asked all the airline unions to come and meet with us next week as we work out how to support a fair bargaining process for the aircraft engineers,'' Ms Burrow said.
"And in that context, we are prepared to urge the engineers not to take their strike action tomorrow."
The ALAEA had planned two four-hour stopwork meetings, for tomorrow and next Friday, but agreed to Ms Burrow's request.
"Our association has decided today that we are going to postpone our action and that will be until further notice," association federal secretary Steve Purvinas said.
"We're going to have some meetings with some of the other unions that work at Qantas ... and hopefully we'll be able to negotiate an outcome that delivers wages and conditions to our members that they deserve."
AAP